Porsche belt humour
Seinfeld
Channel 10
7pm week nights
Review by Al McCall
After stitching up a deal for another season the cast of Seinfeld must have been pretty peeved when Jerry pulled the rug from under them.
As one of the cast may have said to the show's creator and namesake: "But Jerry, you can't kill the show! What about the $923,000 I was going to get an episode?".
To keep the cast together the National Broadcasting Corporation was reputed to have offered Seinfeld $8.5 million an episode to stay on. But the copyright owner was adamant and Seinfeld will cease production this year.
All the wheeling and dealing that has led up to the show's imminent demise must have shaken its millions of addicts worldwide. That a simple passive act performed weekly with a chair and console can generate such high incomes for so few suggests that, for some, there's a barrel of money in a barrel of laughs.
But is the show really that good?
While occasional scripts were superb models of American sitcom writing, generally the series relied on all the standard attributes of such a program: quirky characters and absurd situations.
Where Seinfeld was different, and perhaps where it recruited its audience, was in its willingness to tackle topics that are not the normal fodder of prime-time comedy television. Instead of being family oriented, Seinfeld sought to appeal to young singles or DINKs (Double Income No Kids). Hence the program's modernity.
This wasn't melodrama for adolescents or sentimental homespun truisms in cameo for Ma or Pa, but a conscious effort to seduce young moderns with lifestyle. Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer may not be rich and famous (unlike the actors who played them) but sowing your wild oats can, apparently, go on ad infinitum. So enjoy. And sex? That's something you do for recreation.
This carefree, guiltless message, devoid of basic distractions like hard work, made Seinfeld rather appealing. To live as Jerry and his friends managed to do in New York needed a good disposable income. Not for nothing was the show's comedy given the label "Porsche belt humour".
At its core Seinfeld was a celebration of yuppiedom, of the "me" in all those who make it up the corporate ladder and all those others who aspire to. En route, all you need are a few peers on hand to stroke your ego or share the cheque at the local eatery. All others are either objects of desire, to be recruited to a short-lived relationship lasting 23 televised minutes, or obnoxious so-and-so's, whose eccentric behaviours annoy you no end but are excuse enough for another episode.
It never took Jerry, Kramer, Elaine or George very long to find some little quirk of character in someone else to warrant complaining about them or ending a relationship.
While the core characters were intended to be neurotic and fickle, the spitefulness that settled in became a norm. Story-lines could be built on singular idiosyncrasies, like the women who laughed or the man who ate too loud. A whole succession of female companions for Jerry had some little oddity, some little thing that put him off. The clique of blow-ins to Jerry's apartment were basically sentenced to being disparaging of everyone else in New York.
Seinfeld's epitaph, when it's due, could read like this: I object to everyone except me and thee, and of thee I have my doubts.